The Publishing Performance Show

Roni Robbins - Transforming Family History into Award-Winning Fiction

• Teddy Smith

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Roni Robbins, an award-winning journalist and author, shares her journey of transforming her grandfather's recorded memories into the award-winning book "Hands of Gold." With a background in journalism spanning publications like the Atlanta Journal Constitution and WebMD, she brings professional storytelling expertise to her family's Holocaust survival story.

In this episode:

  • Journey from journalism to authorship
  • Converting oral history to narrative
  • Research and verification process
  • Traditional publishing journey
  • Marketing strategies and awards
  • Future writing projects
  • Legacy preservation techniques


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[00:00:00] Teddy: Hello everybody and welcome to the Publishing Informant show. Today I'm absolutely delighted to be joined by Ronnie Robbins who is a journalist and an author and she wrote the book The Hands of God and it's all about her relationship with her father and the way she wrote her book was really interesting because she took tapes and recordings of things he said and turned them into a narrative making a really interesting way of making a book.

[00:00:28] Teddy: I think it's a great way of creating some interesting stories out of historical events that have happened within your own family. It's a really fascinating story to hear how she got hold of the tapes and how she ended up here. So I think you're going to find it a really interesting episode if you're ever thinking about writing something, but biographical.

[00:00:44] Teddy: Hello and welcome to the publishing form show today. I'm here with Ronnie Robbins, who is a award winning author and journalist, and she's got written her first book and we're here to talk all about her first book, hands of God. So Robin, thank you for, for joining the show. 

[00:00:59] Roni: Thank you for having me here. 

[00:01:02] Teddy: So tell me, did you always want to be a writer?

[00:01:06] Roni: Yes, I always wanted to be a writer. I started out just really being interested in my own penmanship, and it started from there. You know, you write notes real, real nice at the beginning and I always used to love to have a fresh notebook and, and start writing notes and, in class, and, and then I developed some interest in poetry, and I thought I might be a musician at one point, but I really just determined that I liked writing the lyrics.

[00:01:36] Roni: And then somebody said that they were going to major in journalism and, and, and it's all about writing. And I thought that sounds like a good job for me. So, in high school, I made that decision and I took that. Journalism, uh, my first class in high school and, and, I wrote all the copy for the school yearbook and because they liked my writing and.

[00:02:01] Roni: And it just took off I got a scholarship to the university here and for journalism and I thought I'm not even a journalist yet. And they, they think I'm a, you know, I'm good at this. So I'll just stick with this. And I really haven't strayed from from being a journalist all these years. So. That's where the writing comes in, that led to the, the being an author too.

[00:02:24] Teddy: Yeah, nice. And are you still a journalist now? 

[00:02:28] Roni: I am. I'm freelancing right now for the Atlanta Journal Constitution here in America and in Atlanta, Georgia, and also Medscape, WebMD, where I was an editor up until about a year ago, but I started freelancing for them, say six months later or so. And so I've been doing two I've been freelancing for two publications healthcare publications, or healthcare divisions of a, of a daily paper on one of them for, for, since like April.

[00:03:02] Teddy: Right. Okay. That makes sense. So what was it that made you want to write this particular book, The Hands of Galt? The, there's a really interesting bio about it where you've got some of your grandfather's tapes and you listen to those and you've turned those into the book, but what, so tell me a bit about the book and what made you want to write the book.

[00:03:19] Roni: So I, I got the cassette tapes. My mom gave me the cassette tapes and that my grandfather had made before he died. And I use that as the basis for the novel. I transcribed all the notes, all the, all of the tapes, and then I filled in the blanks, but initially I didn't know I was going to write a book on it.

[00:03:42] Roni: I just was listening to the tapes and then I wrote a column for a newspaper that I was working on. Writing for at the time and and the column was just leaving your legacy behind as a, as something to hand down to your children and your grandchildren and giving memories of voice. That's what I titled it.

[00:04:01] Roni: Leaving a legacy to your progeny. I, I wrote that and then I decided that I wanted to stay home with my children and I thought there might be something more here that I could turn into a book that there was more than could fit into a column. So I decided to do that. 

[00:04:21] Teddy: Nice. I did quite a similar project at school with my, with my grandfather, because he was, he went to Berlin, during the Second World War at the end, and he was one of the last people there, so he had loads of, like, random bits of Nazi, like, propaganda and things like that in his loft.

[00:04:35] Teddy: So I was able to just put, like, these leaflets and things in this project I made about my grandfather. Unbelievable. Yeah, but so what's your book? What was what were the recordings like? How does it come about that you got hold of those recordings? 

[00:04:48] Roni: So my mom gave me them. I don't know why nobody else really had them.

[00:04:54] Roni: I know my aunt had them and my aunt maybe made a copy for my mom. But nobody else knew about these tapes. So, Not really sure why, but if they were given to the other family members, they didn't pass them around. So my mom knew that I would appreciate him. I don't think she knew I would write a book, but she knew I would appreciate them.

[00:05:17] Roni: there were a few things in there and you're like, oh, it's your grandfather's tape. Who cares? You know, like. Okay, who's your grandfather? Like, why should anyone care about your grandfather? And I, I would tell them the same, you know, I wouldn't have known either so much. And if I hadn't listened to the tapes and also just dived in, delved into his background, doing some research, genealogy research, but he and my grandmother, they died a year to the date, on the same exact date, a year apart I thought that was super romantic.

[00:05:47] Roni: I mean, in a morbid sort of way, but just like you've gone through your life together and then you love each other so much that the first anniversary, which is symbolic for Jewish people that first anniversary of the death would be so, You know, heartbreaking that you couldn't even get through it.

[00:06:05] Roni: And so also in the tapes I'm not sure they're in the tape where I made this part up, but I have at the beginning of my book, meet me in heaven tie up loose ends and meet me in heaven. So I originally was going to name the book, meet me in heaven, but that's been overdone overused. But there were some other things in the book.

[00:06:24] Roni: They lost most of their family in the Holocaust but they weren't there. So how does that feel to hear about your, the loss of all your family and know that you had left, left them there or left before this happened and there, but for the grace of God, go I and when we're talking full families, sisters, brothers, uncles.

[00:06:45] Roni: So there were 11 children in. There were 13 children in my grandfather's family and 11 of them died a few of them made it out and were, and were able to live like him And and and live their lives fully, but the rest of them perished. And then. He was also involved in a workplace shooting spray.

[00:07:07] Roni: And because he was a, he was recuperating from tuberculosis. And tuberculosis is a huge killer of people worldwide. We think that COVID is bad, but tuberculosis is still the biggest infection. It's the largest killer infectious disease of infectious disease that's killed the people around the world.

[00:07:30] Roni: And he was a. Test case for streptomyosin, which is still used today as a treatment. He was told he was terminal at 27, but he lived till 87. so there were bits and pieces of his life that I thought I should string together to show that just some man, you know, some everyday man can have such interesting parts of his life and be such a.

[00:07:59] Roni: a persistent survivor against the tragedies and the obstacles they get in one's way in life. 

[00:08:06] Teddy: Amazing. Must have been quite emotional like re redoing the book with those tapes of your actual grandfather's stories. 

[00:08:14] Roni: And I grew up with him, so, you know, yes, but I'm a journalist and I'm used to separating myself from the facts.

[00:08:23] Roni: So yes, if I, if I cried, maybe at the end, my thought was maybe that it would be the powerful for other people to, um, and that's what I was going for. I didn't mean to make people cry, but they do. Because, that's the power of words, right? That's the power of showing emotions to people.

[00:08:48] Roni: and I wanted that all in there. Yeah, of course. Now coming to actually the writing process in the book. So when you, a lot of people I speak to want to write autobiographies either about themselves or maybe even other famous people. And so having those tapes, forgetting that it's your grandfather for one second, it's quite a useful thing to have because it's so practical, a way of like, getting all that information in one go.

[00:09:11] Teddy: Could you tell us a little bit about what that process was like of getting that information and turning it into a novel or even just writing it down and turning it into some kind of book? So again, I transcribed the tapes, but that's not enough. And that, that was sort of dry. You know, it's just some one person talking and I decided to make it into a novel where I would change all the names to protect all the people that are still alive.

[00:09:37] Roni: And also To create dialogue and make it much more interesting than it might have been or a little bit more interesting. It was already interesting. But I did do a lot of research. I went to national archives here in Atlanta. And also the Mormon family history center. The Church of Latter day Saints, they do a lot of record keeping on families.

[00:10:00] Roni: So they have family history centers around the country. I'm not sure what they have in the UK. But, I definitely went to physically, physically to those locations because this was before Ancestry. com anything online. So it was all really. Primitive, it's microfilm and microfiche and, and you know, using their old fashioned technology to zoom through history so to speak.

[00:10:28] Roni: So I did research there. I did research online when it was finally online and I just had to be historically accurate. So there was a lot of details to fill in. So, I could have just reported it as is not reported, but recorded it and written it as, as it was. But I wanted to really be historically accurate as a journalist.

[00:10:52] Roni: You know, I wanted my facts straight, and I wanted it to be. People to to take a step back into history and and and feel everything that was going on at the time culturally. And and and politically and historically and, I wanted it all in there. So there was a lot of research. I also interviewed a few family members.

[00:11:17] Roni: And you know, so it took a long time, it did, and, and I I think that was probably it. So I, and I tinkered a lot. I went back and edited and reworked and reorganized and the, it took, it took a lot of work to get that. It's not just, you know, people ask me how it's different from journalism and you might ask me that.

[00:11:39] Roni: It's, it's different, but it's the same. there's a lot of skills from journalism that are the same and that I used, in this work and but making up dialogue having that kind, kind of a conversation between people that was definitely a challenge.

[00:11:55] Teddy: Yeah. Do you think your background in journalism helps you with the writing process? 

[00:12:01] Roni: I do believe it did because I knew how to research and I knew what, what to, what facts I needed to double check and back up in and how to take a step back and, and lay out, define any terms, define any pop culture that was going on at the time, take a step back and, and just, you know, expand upon some of the facts so that there's a context for.

[00:12:29] Roni: The narrative. Yeah. Now, I think a lot of people listening to this are going to be thinking, this is absolutely amazing that you've got these recordings of your grandfather. Now they might want to be inspired to do something similar. So if you were gonna, obviously you listen to your grandfather's tapes and he tapes them without really a plan.

[00:12:44] Teddy: I'm guessing he just wanted to put his memories down, but if you were, was there anything missing from those tapes that you thought would have been a useful question to ask or a useful way of going about doing that? doing that recording that if someone was listening to this and wants to do something with maybe one of their family members or something or someone interesting they've met that would be more useful.

[00:13:03] Roni: So I think genealogists have a great sense of questions to ask family. Um, so you can find some of those, tools online for, for doing this kind of research into your family. I think there can be quite if you ask questions, if instead of just handing the tape and letting them do it on their own, if you sat with them and ask them questions that you wanted answered, then that would be good because they're just going to tell you what they want to tell you.

[00:13:33] Roni: I don't think I learned from the tapes. That my grandfather was in a workplace shooting. I don't think I look I learned from the tapes that he lost all his family in the holocaust. He told me just his own life. Well, he didn't tell me he told whoever would listen now. He says in the tapes, if anyone wanted to do anything with this, so be it.

[00:13:56] Roni: I took that as a personal calling, as the only writer at that time, professional writer in the family, you know, somebody who makes a living as a writer. So since then there's been others that are, that are turned out to be writers too. But they didn't maybe start out that way or weren't journalists.

[00:14:13] Roni: I, I think if you have a plan in mind and, and, and there are resources online to get to, to know how to. Interview family members to create family trees and and, you know, you can use that the same skills that they would use are the skills that I would have tried to use if I had the opportunity. So, when I did have the opportunity to interview family members who are still around, who knew my grandparents, I interviewed a cousin and an uncle who's in the book.

[00:14:45] Roni: Both of them are in the book. And, and they were very helpful to fill in some of the blanks and, and to also tell me their own stories as it relates to my grandparents. 

[00:14:55] Teddy: Great. Amazing. Now, once you had the book written and you had all your notes, did you do all of the next steps yourself, like the editing and that, or did you work with a partner to get that thing done?

[00:15:05] Roni: So I am an editor myself as a journalist. So, so I would say the majority of it, I did myself, but I did, I did have some help. I did allow people to read chapters. I had, I'll tell you this, my, I had a publisher. But it took me, some years to find a publisher a traditional publisher.

[00:15:27] Roni: I held out for that. And when I found her, I, well, I was working with her for 2 years and we were getting close to the finish line and and then we had some legal issues arising that stem from concern about me having an LLC and why I would need an LLC, which I think it's important to have an LLC in case anyone tries to sue you in business or in, you know, In and then this is a business.

[00:15:53] Roni: This is my business. Now is Mark is selling my book, but she was my there was concern that somebody might sue me and my publisher got scared. But during that time, she was perfecting my book. So, in essence, she edited my book. And I, I did pay her for that. And I, to get clear of the contract.

[00:16:14] Roni: I had that, you know, value of the editing process that was preparing for launch of the book in that whole process and, and she, she did an excellent job of making my book into something really readable and then I took it to the next publisher after 6 months. It was depressing, but after 6 months.

[00:16:34] Roni: I got another publisher who now had more of a finished product and and took it to the finish line. So I did have that editing. I did pay for editing periodically. I had editing along the way at various points, but more so like the beginning of the book versus the whole thing. 

[00:16:56] Teddy: So what, when you, why did you decide to go down the route of having a, publisher rather than self publishing all yourself?

[00:17:03] Roni: Okay, so, and I know you, you support self publishers and I, and there are so many value so many things of value to have, you know, to be your own business person to be your own to be in charge of your own destiny. Yes, I get all that. See, I always wrote for other publications. So. I felt as a journalist that I wanted to go through that grueling process of, but knowing that my book had been made it through the screening process and, you know, didn't end up in the slush pile, you know, didn't end up in the garbage can, that I had made it to that point.

[00:17:44] Roni: So I was going to hold out on that because I've been published by major publications. Why couldn't I get. A book published I didn't understand. It's the same concept. You're a storyteller. 1 place you get published. You know, my stories have been picked up by Forbes and Huffington post and I was a contributor.

[00:18:05] Roni: I was a freelancer. Correspondent for New York Daily News, you know, and and other publications WebMD I wrote for you don't get to write for those places. If you don't have quality writing, if you're not a good writer, if you're not a good researcher, if you can't tell a story and keep people's interest, you're not going to get in those.

[00:18:26] Roni: They're not going to pick up your stuff. If if if. If you are terrible, so I also didn't want to subject people to reading something that I put out that wasn't. Through that process now, everyone has to make their own decisions. if you don't care about those things, if it's not about that, if it's about making money, 

[00:18:46] Roni: if it's about, you know, you just want the book out there, you know, then then self publishing is probably the way to go. Self publishing has come a long way to I should say, since I. Since I started out trying to get published it wasn't looked at highly maybe as as much as it is now. And now I know that publishers, traditional publishers also will take some self published books you know, on some will so I, I also know that even if you are.

[00:19:19] Roni: If self published or even if you're traditionally published, you have to do all the marketing yourself. So in that way, it's not different. If you're about the profits and you want to keep the profits and you know how to set up a book online and you feel confident in your skills to, to do that, or you learn how to do that.

[00:19:37] Roni: Self publishing is great. It just wasn't what I wanted to do. 

[00:19:40] Teddy: Yeah. Great. And talking about marketing. So what marketing did you do to make your book into a success? Self publish. Yeah. 

[00:19:48] Roni: Well, I don't know that it's a success, but, I don't know what defines success. I've gotten 6 awards, so I would say enter awards, but be careful about the awards because everyone wants to market your book and everyone wants you to enter their award.

[00:20:02] Roni: So award so look at some, make sure that you've investigated that there that the that these are legitimate awards that these are, they actually are not, you know, not just awarding people who enter every single 1, but, but they really do have a judging they have judges that make these decisions and they really do read your book.

[00:20:25] Roni: So I would go with looking online for those lists of the best awards to enter. So I won international book award and I won. Global book awards, and I won American fiction awards. I was a finalist for that and I was a finalist for. Legacy awards and so definitely there are certain awards, the American Book Fest and those are legitimate. the ones that I mentioned. and there's reader's choice awards. Just just be careful and do your homework about the awards, but it does lend legitimacy to your. To what you're doing, I won a 2009 Amazon breakthrough novel award contest.

[00:21:09] Roni: I was a quarter finalist for historical fiction at that point. I knew I had something that that it was worth putting out there. So, I that's when I started, really looking for a publisher after that point, I wasn't ready. I had a lot of cold feet. I had cold feet a number of times and or as they say you're for doctors.

[00:21:29] Roni: They there's some terms that they use for being scared imposter syndrome. That's what it is. So I, I didn't think I was an author yet, but I also I'm on I set up Facebook, special Facebooks for the book, um, and for I have a page and I have a special Facebook, account for hands of gold and from me as an author, a separate from my personal 1.

[00:21:54] Roni: I have a X. I built up my it was Twitter. Then I built up Twitter to to have a following there. I'm on Instagram and tick tock on my my son made my tick tock. My daughter helps me with my Instagram use all the resources that you have. I also entered opportunities to be in book festivals.

[00:22:19] Roni: Yes. So, and and I was in a, so I also been in a a library book. Festival, and I've been in a big book festival here in which my I was featured along with people like Nikki Haley, who is running for president here and up until recently. this was before she was running, but, and Andrew young

[00:22:41] Roni: john Meacham, Michael Oren Jody Bacall, Benjamin Netanyahu, all of these people were either zoomed in or, or they were there and I, that was a big break for me, but I, I had to enter go through the process to be in that book festival, Jewish book festival. Um, and so I think.

[00:23:02] Roni: Using all of your different opportunities to market yourself. 

[00:23:07] Teddy: Do you think have you had any specific opportunities come your way or any particularly good stories come from being winning the awards? Cause obviously it's really nice to win the awards, but you kind of want them to either give you something that isn't just a nice little gold badge for your book.

[00:23:21] Teddy: Have you noticed any like upticks in sales or any good opportunities that have come your way as a result of those? 

[00:23:27] Roni: So I had a publicist, uh, help me to promote the International Book Award, and I got on Yahoo, Finance, and a bunch of other, publications picked up the story because it's on the, PR Newswire.

[00:23:42] Roni: so I had a list of publications that picked up that story that that I had won the award and then you get, you know, I wrote a little bit about that. I mean, they that they, they, they could. Have that background of the of the press release to use if nothing else. So that went on Yahoo.

[00:23:59] Roni: Yahoo is pretty big. I think it was Yahoo finance and a bunch of other publications. So, I think the legitimacy of it of all of these things now, I'm in the. US Holocaust Memorial Museum gift shop. My book is in there. I was in the Jerusalem Post. I was in the Washington Jewish week Washington, D. C. I I think legitimacy is, is underrated.

[00:24:23] Roni: Uh, you know, is credibility for your book. It's not all about being a bestseller there. It's tiny baby steps to get there. 

[00:24:32] Teddy: Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like using your network and people, you know, for example, going into the Holocaust Museum when your book is specifically about the, you know, those sorts of stories, that's a great way to kind of, to get that extra visibility for your book and using your network.

[00:24:46] Teddy: What was it like working with a publicist? What, how did that process work? So, I had a local publicist who I knew here, she used to pitch me stories at a publication. So PR agents are often publicist too. I mean, it's the same thing. They're just PR there. They're PR for your book. she was, she was here locally.

[00:25:08] Roni: I knew her. She had connections with this book festival, which was was helpful. She used to be, on the staff of this book festival. So those, those relationships are really what helped me to get into that local book festival. I chose, I think that it was good. It was very expensive.

[00:25:27] Roni: It's like 75 an hour. And I think that's cheap. You know, that's probably a bargain. I know people who've spent so much more on their on their marketing, you know, and it costs money. It costs money to be a writer, author. It's not. Hopefully you'll get the money back I'm not there yet, but but you know, I put out still money to, to try to get marketing.

[00:25:51] Roni: This is marketing. 

[00:25:54] Teddy: Yes. What, um, what plans have you got for the future for writing new books? 

[00:25:59] Roni: So I already started on a book that's loosely based on my dad's life, right? I am. I don't know why I'm writing about men, but men in my life, but we're going a little closer to home. My dad was a blacksmith. He made things out of metal.

[00:26:15] Roni: He. Was also got a lot of media attention over the years and got to be in some pretty neat places with his craft you know, I'm a writer. That's my art and craft that. So, his is his was metalworking, actual physical labor, and beauty and creativity and art. And I'm going to write about him.

[00:26:36] Roni: He and I had a strained relationship, so he's a personality in my opinion. So I'm going to. Dive into that 1, I already started it. He passed away in, in March, so it's pretty raw right now, but I'm going through the morning period and I'm. Thinking about how to leave his legacy behind in, in, in, in this way, he has, he doesn't need my, he didn't need my help.

[00:27:03] Roni: He had lots of articles written about him over the years. And we traveled a lot around the country with his with the. His displays, so, yeah, that's my next book and it takes off a little bit on the 1st book, because he's a character in the 1st book with my mom. So they, so there will be a little bit of a crossover and this book working title is a mighty arm.

[00:27:28] Roni: Just like hands of gold, I seem to be also obsessed with gold. People's limbs, people's arms, limbs, right? There you go appendages, but our hands are, our hands and our arms are very important. Yeah, 

[00:27:42] Teddy: brilliant. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. That's been, it's been great hearing about those backstories.

[00:27:47] Teddy: It'd be really interesting for people, I think, who have thought about, you know, taping people's in their family's lives and understanding those stories and Working out, you know, the exact processes you went through to get your books into, you know, to get some good sales and to get them selling well. So thank you very much.

[00:28:00] Teddy: If people want to get in touch with you, where's the best place for them to do that? So 

[00:28:05] Roni: www. roniravins. com. R O N I R O B B I N S is how you spell my name. I'm on Facebook, either as Ronnie Robbins, Ronnie Cain Robbins, or Ronnie Robbins author, or just hands of gold. I'm on all kinds of social media.

[00:28:26] Roni: They can buy the book on Amazon and border borders Barnes and oval. Books a Million Target, Walmart, any place they would buy books Goodreads. it's available where books are sold, I should say. Brilliant. 

[00:28:43] Teddy: Well, great. Well, thank you very much for joining us today and we'll speak again soon.

[00:28:49] Teddy: so much for tuning into the publishing performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about publishing performance, the number one platform for authors who want to increase Amazon book sales, but I'm not really sure where to start.

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